Theodore Sturgeon - Venus Plus X

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Utterly aside from the subject matter

GERTRUDE and her Isaac

VENUS PLUS X

A PYRAMID BOOK

First Printing, September 1960 Second printing. May 1962 Third printing,

March 1968 Fourth printing, December 1969 Fifth printing, July 1971

This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character herein

and any person, living or dead; any such resemblance is purely coincidental.

PYRAMID BOOKS are published by Pyramid Publications

A Division of Pyramid Communications, Inc.

444 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022, U.S.A.

\\ff*

CHARLIE JOHNS," URGENTLY

cried Charlie Johns: "Charlie Johns, Charlie Johns!" for that was the absolute

necessity—to know who Charlie Johns was, not to let go of that for a second,

for anything, ever.

"I am Charlie Johns," he said argumentatively, and plaintively, he said it

again. No one argued, no one denied it. He lay in the warm dark with his knees

drawn up and his arms crossed and his forehead pressed tight against his

kneecaps. He saw dull flickering red, but that was inside his eyelids, and he

was Charlie Johns.

C, Johns once stencilled on a foot-locker, written in speed-ball black-letter

on a high-school diploma, typed on a pay-check. Johns, Chas. in the telephone

book.

The name, all right. All right, fine, okay, but a man is more than a name. A

man is twenty-seven years old, he sees the hairline just so in his morning

mirror and likes a drop of Tabasco on his eggs (over light: whites firm, yolks

runny). He was born with one malformed toe and a strabismus. He can cook a

steak drive a car love a girl run a mimeograph go to the bathroom brush his

teeth, including the permanent bridge, left upper lateral incisor and

bicuspid. He left the house in plenty of time but he is going to be late to

work.

He opened his eyes and it wasn't dull flickering red at all, but grey—a cold

sourceless silver, grey like snail trails on the lilac leaves—a springtime

thing, that. Spring it was, oh that springtime thing; it was love last night,

Laura, she—

When daylight saving time is new, the daylit evening is forever, and you can

do so much. How he begged Laura for the chance to get her screens up; if Mom

could have seen that, now! And down in Laura's stinking cellar, shuffling

through the half-dark with the screens under his arm, he had walked into the

cruel point of the dangling strap-hinge of a discarded shutter, torn a hole in

his brown tweed pants, punched a red blood-bruise (with warp and woof stamped

on it) on his thigh. And worth it, worth it, all that forever-evening, with a

girl, a real girl (she could prove it) for all the long end of the evening;

and all the way home love! of here and of now, and spring of course, and oh of

course love! said the tree-frogs, the lilacs, the air, and the way sweat dried

on him. (Good—this is good. Good to be a part of here and of now, and spring

of course, and oh of course, love; but best of all, to remember, to know it

all, Charlie.) Better than love just to remember home, the walk between high

hedges, the two white lamps with the big black 61 painted on each (Mom had

done that for the landlord; she was clever with her hands) only they were

pretty weathered by now, yes the hands too. The foyer with the mottled brass

wall-full of mailboxes and discreet pushbuttons for the tenants, and the

grille of the house phone that had never worked since they moved here, and

that massive brass plate solidly concealing the electric lock, which for years

he had opened with a blow of bis shoulder, never breaking stride . . . and get

closer, closer, because it is so important to remember; nothing remembered is

important; it's remembering that matters; you can! you can!

The steps from the ground floor had old-fashioned nickel-plated nosings over

carpet worn down to the backing, red fuzz at the edges. (Miss Mundprf taught

first grade, Miss Willard taught second grade, Miss Hooper taught fifth.

Remember everything.) He looked around him, where he lay remembering in the

silver light; the soft walls were unlike metal and unlike fabric but rather

like both, and it was very warm ... he went on remembering with his eyes open:

the flight from the second floor to the third had the nickel nosing too, but

no carpeting, and the steps were all hollowed, oh, very slightly; mounting

them, you could be thinking about anything, but that clack clack, as a change

from the first flight's flap flap, put you right there, you knew where you

were . . .

Charlie Johns screamed, "Oh God—where am I?" He unfolded himself, rolled over

on his stomach, drew up his knees, and then for a moment could move no more.

His mouth was dry and hot inside as pillowslips creasing under Mom's iron; his

muscles, leg and back, all soft and tight-tangled like the knitting basket Mom

was going to clean out some day . . .

. . . love with Laura, spring, the lights with 61, the shoulder on the lock,

up the stairs flap flap, clack clack and— surely he could remember the rest of

the way, because he had gone in gone to bed gotten up left for work . . .

hadn't he? Hadn't he?

Shakily he pressed himself up, knelt, weakly squatted. His head dropped

forward and he rested, panting. He watched the brown fabric of his clothes as

if it were a curtain, about to open upon unknown but certain horror.

And it did.

"The brown suit," he whispered. Because there on his thigh was the little rip

(and under it the small hurtful bulge of the checkered bruise) to prove that

he had not dressed for work this morning, had not even reached the top of the

second flight. Instead, he was—here.

Because he could not stand just yet, he hunched around, fists and knees,

blinking and turning his unsteady head. Once he stopped and touched his chin.

It had no more stubble than it should have for a man coming home from a date

he had shaved for.

He turned again and saw a tall oval finely scribed into the curved wall. It

was the first feature he had been able to discover in this padded place. He

gaped at it and it gave him Nothing.

He wondered what time it was. He lifted his arm and turned his head and got

his ear to his watch. It was, thank God, still running. He looked at it. He

looked at it for a long time without moving. He seemed not to be able to read

it. At last he was able to understand that the numerals were the wrong way

round, mirror-reversed; 2 was where 10 should be, 8 where four should be. The

hands pointed to what should have been eleven minutes to eleven, but was, if

this watch really were running backwards, eleven minutes past one. And it was

running backwards. The sweep second-hand said so.

And do you know, Charlie, something under the terror and the wonderment said

to him, do you know, all you want to do, even now, is remember? there was the

terrible old battleax you got for Algebra 3 in high school, when you'd flunked

Algebra 1 and had to take it over, and had gone through Algebra 2 and Geometry

1 on your belly, and flunked Geometry 2 and had to take it over—remember? and

then for Algebra 3 you got this Miss Moran, and she was like IBM, with teeth.

And then one day you asked her about something that puzzled you a little and

the way she answered, you had to ask more . . . and she opened a door for you

that you never knew was there, and she herself became something . . . well,

after that, you watched her and knew what the frozen mein, the sharp

discipline, the sheer inhumanity of the woman was for. She was just waiting

for someone to come and ask her questions about mathematics a little beyond, a

little outside the book. And it was as if she had long ago despaired of

finding anyone that would. Why it meant so much to her was that she loved

mathematics in a way that made it a pity the word "love" had ever been used

for anything else. And also that from minute to minute she never knew if some

kid asking questions would be the last she'd ever know, or open a door for,

because she was dying of cancer, which nobody never even suspected until she

just didn't show up one day.

Charlie Johns looked at the faint oval hi the soft silver wall and wished Miss

Moran could be here. He also wished Laura could be here. He could remember

them both so clearly, yet they were so many years apart from each other (and

how many, he thought, looking at his wrist watch, how many years from me?) He

wished Mom could be here, and the Texas redhead. (She was the first time for

him, the redhead; and how would she mix with Mom? For that matter, how would

Laura mix with Miss Moran?)

He could not stop remembering; dared not, and did not want to stop. Because as

long as he kept remembering, he knew he was Charlie Johns; and although he

might be in a new place without knowing what time it was, he wasn't lost, no

one is ever lost, as long as he knows who he is.

Whimpering with effort, he got to his feet. He was so weak and muzzy-headed

that he could only stand by bracing his feet wide apart; he could only walk by

flailing his arms to keep his balance. He aimed for the faint oval line on the

wall because it was the only thing here to aim for, but when he tried to go

forward he progressed diagonally sidewise; it was like the time (he

remembered) at the fun house at Coney Island, where they get you in a room and

close it up and unbeknownst to you they tilt it a little to one side, you with

no outside reference; and only green mirrors to see yourself in. They used to

have to hose it out five, six times a day. He felt the same way now; but he

had an advantage; he knew who he was, and hi addition he knew he was sick. As

he stumbled on the soft curved part where the floor became wall, and sank on

one knee on the resilient silver, he croaked, "I'm not myself just now, that's

all." Then he heard his own words properly and leapt to his feet: "Yes I am!"

he shouted, "I am!"

He tottered forward, and since there was nothing to hold on the oval—it was

only a thin line, taller than he was—he pushed against it.

It opened.

There was someone waiting outside, smiling, dreaaed • such a way that Charlie

gasped and said, "Oh, I beg your pardon . . ." and then pitched forward on his

face.

HerZ> Raile lives out in Homewood, where he has a hundred and fifty feet on

Begonia Drive, and two hundred and thirty feet back to where Smitty Smith's

begins its two-hundred-and-thirty-foot run to its one-hundred-fifty-foot

frontage on Calla Drive. Herb Raile's house is a split-level, Smith's a

rancher. Herb's neighbors to the right and left have splits.

Herb wheels into the drive and honks and puts his head out. "Surprise!"

Jeanette is mowing the lawn with a power mower and with all that racket, the

car horn makes her jump immoderately. She puts her foot on the grounding-plate

and holds it down until the mower stops, and then runs laughing to the car.

"Daddy, Daddy!"

"Daddy, daddy, dadeee!" Davy is five, Karen three.

"Oh, honey, why are you hornet"

"Closed the Arcadia account, and the great man says, Herb, he says, go on home

to your kids. You look cooL" Jeanette is hi shorts and a T-shirt.

"I was a good boy, I was a good boy," Davy shrills, poking in Herb's side

pocket.

"I was a good boy too," shrieks Karen.

Herb laughs and scoops her up. "Oh, what a man you'll grow up to be!"

"Shush, Herb, you'll get her all mixed up. Did you remember tiie cake?"

Herb puts down the three-year-old and turns to the car. "Cake mix. Much better

when you bake it yourself." Stilling her moan, he adds, "I'll do it, I'll do

it. I can slam up a better cake than you any old day. Butter, toilet paper."

"Cheese?"

"Damn. I got talking to Louie." He takes the parcel and goes in to change.

While he is gone, Davy puts his foot where Jeanette put her foot when she

stopped the mower. The

cylinder bead is still hot. Davy is barefoot. When Herb comes out again

Jeanette is saying, "Shh. Shh. Be a man." Herb is wearing shorts and a

T-shirt.

IT WASN'T MAIDENLY modesty that made Charlie Johns keel over like that.

Anything could have done it—a flashlight in the face, the sudden apparition of

steps going down. And anyway, he'd thought it was a woman dressed like that.

He hadn't been able to think of anyone else but women since he found himself

in that tank—Laura, Mom, Miss Moran, the Texas redhead. He could see why a

flash glance at this character would make anyone think so. Not that he could

really see anything at the moment; he was lying flat on his back on something

resilient but not so soft as the tank—rather like those wheel tables they have

in hospitals. And someone was gently working on a cut high on his forehead,

while a cool wet cloth smelling remotely like witch hazel lay blissfully

across the rest of his forehead and his eyes. But whoever it was was talking

to him, and though he couldn't understand a word, he didn't think it was a

woman's voice. It was no basso prof undo, but it wasn't a woman's voice. Oh

brother, what a get-up. Imagine a sort of short bathrobe, deep scarlet,

belted, but opening sharply away above and below. Above it was cut back behind

the arms, and back of the neck a stiff collar stood up higher than the top of

the head; it was shaped like the back of an upholstered chair and was darn

near as big. Below the belt the garment cut back and down just as sharply to

come together in a swallow-tail like a formal coat. In front, under the belt,

was a short silky arrangement something like what the Scot wears in front of

his kilt and calls a sporran. Very soft-looking slipper-socks, the same color

as the robe, and with sharp-cut, floppy points front and back, came up to

about mid-calf.

Whatever the treatment was, it killed the throb hi his forehead with almost

shocking suddenness. He lay still a moment, afraid that it might rear up and

bash him as suddenly, but it didn't. He put up a tentative hand, whereupon the

cloth was snatched away from his eyes and he found himself

looking up into a smiling face which said several fluid syllables, ending hi

an interrogative trill.

Charlie said, "Where am I?"

The face shrugged its eyebrows and laughed pleasantly. Firm cool fingers

touched his lips, and the head wagged from side to side.

Charlie understood, so said, "I don't understand you either." He reared up on

one elbow and looked around him. He felt much stronger.

He was hi a large, stubbily T-shaped chamber. Most of the stem of the T was

taken up by the—call it padded cell he had left; its door stood open still.

Inside and out, it gleamed with that sourceless, soft, cold silver light. It

looked like a huge pumpkin with wings.

The whole top of the T, floor to ceiling and from end to end, was a single

transparent pane. Charlie thought he may have seen one as large hi a

department-store show-window, but he doubted it. At each end of the T were

drapes; he presumed there were doors there.

Outside it was breathtaking. A golf-course can sometimes present rolling green

something like that—but not miles, square miles of it. There were stands of

trees here and there, and they were tropical; the unmistakable radiance of the

flamboyante could be seen, nearly felt, it was so vivid; and there were

palms—traveler's, cabbage, and coconut palms, and palmettos; tree-ferns and

flowering cacti. On a clump of stone nuns, so very picturesque they might

almost have been built there for the purpose of being picturesque ruins, stood

a magnificent strangler fig nearly a hundred feet high, with its long

clutching roots and multiple trunks matching the arch and droop of its glossy

foliage.

The only building to be seen—and they were up quite high—twelve or fourteen

stories, Charlie guessed, and on high ground at that—was impossible.

Take a cone—a dunce cap. Taper it about three times as tall as it ought to be.

Now bend it into a graceful curve, almost to a quarter circle. Now invert it,

place its delicate tip in the ground and walk away, leaving its heavy base

curving up and over and supported by nothing at all. Now make the whole thing

about four hundred feet high, with jewel-like groups of pleasantly

asymmetrical windows, and oddly placed, curved balconies which seemed to be

of, rather than on the surface, and you have an idea of that building, that

impossible building.

Charlie Johns looked at it, and at his companion, and,

open-mouthed, at the building and back again. The man looked, and did not look

human. The eyes were almost too far apart and too long—a little more of both,

and they'd have been on the sides rather than the front of his face. The chin

was strong and smooth, the teeth prominent and excellent, the nose large and

with nostrils so high-arched that only a fraction of arc spared them from

belonging to some horse. Charlie already knew that those fingers were strong

and gentle; so was the face, the whole mein and carriage. The torso was rather

longer, somehow, than it ought to be, the legs a little shorter than, if

Charlie were an artist, he would have drawn them. And of course, those clothes

. . .

"I'm on Mars," quavered Charlie Johns, meaning to be funny somehow, and

sounding pitiably frightened. He made a useless gesture at the building.

To his surprise, the man nodded eagerly and smiled.. He had a warm and

confident smile. He pointed to Charlie, to himself, and to the building, took

a step toward the enormous window and beckoned.

Well, why not? ... yet Charlie cast a lingering glance back at the door of the

silver cell from which he had emerged. Little as he liked it, it was the only

thing here which was remotely familiar to him.

The man sensed his feeling, and made a reassuring, sort of U-turn gesture

toward the distant building and back to the cell.

With a half-hearted smile, Charlie agreed to go.

The man took him briskly by the arm and marched off, not to the draped ends of

the room, but straight to the window, straight through the window. This last

he did by himself. Charlie dug in his heels and fled back to the wheeled

table.

The man stood outside, firmly on thin air, and beckoned, smiling. He called to

Charlie too, but Charlie only saw that; there was no sound. When one is in an

enclosed place, one feels it—actually, one hears it—hi any case, one knows it,

and Charlie knew it. Yet that bright-robed creature had stepped through

whatever enclosed it, leaving it enclosed, and was now impatiently, though

cheerfully, calling to Charlie to join him.

There is a time for pride, thought Charlie, and this is it, and I haven't got

any. He crept to the window, got down on his hands and knees, and slowly

reached toward the pane. It was there, to ear, to spatial feel, but not to his

hand. He inched outward.

The man, laughing (but laughing with, not laughing at, Charlie was certain)

»walked outdoors on nothing and came to him. When he made as if to take

Charlie's hand, Charlie snatched it back. The man laughed again, bent and

slapped hard against the level which unaccountably carried his feet. Then he

stood up and stamped.

Well, obviously he was standing on something. Charlie, remembering (again)

remembered seeing an old West Indian woman at San Juan airport, coming for no

one knows what reason off her first flight, meeting her first escalator. She

backed and filled and touched and jumped, until finally the husky young man

with her picked her up bodily and plunked her on it. She grasped the rail and

shrieked all the way up, and at the top, continued her shrieks; they were,

they had been all along, shrieks of laughter.

Well, crawl he might, but he wouldn't shriek. Pale and hollow-eyed, he put a

hand through where the pane wasn't, and slapped where the man had slapped.

This one he could feel.

Crawling on one hand and two knees, paddling ahead of him with the other hand,

eyes slitted and head back so he would see out but not down, he passed through

the nothing-at-all which so adequately enclosed the room, out upon the

nothing-at-all which waited outside.

The man, whose voice he could suddenly hear again, laughingly beckoned him

farther out, but Charlie was as far out as he intended to be. So to his horror

the man suddenly swooped on him, lifted him bodily, and bumped his right hand

down on a midair nothing about waist high to him— a handrail!

Charlie gazed at his right hand, apparently empty but grasping a blessed

something; he could see the flattened flesh at the side of his grip, the

whitening knuckles. He placed his other hand beside it and looked across the

breeze—there' was quite a breeze—at the other, who said something hi his

singing tongue and pointed downward. Reflexively Charlie Johns looked down,

and gasped. It was probably no more than two hundred feet, but they looked to

him like miles. He gulped and nodded, for obviously the man had said something

cheerful like "Helluva drop, hey?" Too late, he realized that the man had said

the equivalent of, "Shall we, old boy?" and he had gone and nodded his head.

They dropped. Charlie shrieked. It was not laugther.

I he Eon Ton Alleys are—is—a complex, consisting of, naturally, bowling

alleys, and of course an adjoining bar; but a good deal has been added. To the

tissue-dispensers, for example, - a second teensy-weensy dispenser for teensy

tissues for milady's lipstick. To the bar, as well, foamy cottage curtains and

a floor-length skirt around the pretzel-and-egg stand. The barmaid has become

somehow a waitress. No one has traced the evolution from beer out of cans to

pink ladies and even excuse-the-expression vermouth and soda. The pool tables

are gone and are replaced by a gifte shoppe.

Here sit Jeanette Raile and her neighbor, Tillie Smith, over a well-earned

(Tillie, especially, is getting to be a first-line, league-type bowler) creme

de menthe frapp6, and get down to the real business of the evening, which

is—business.

"Accounting is accounting," says Jeanette, "and copy is copy. So why does old

Beerbelly keep throwing his weight around in the copy department?"

Tillie sips and delicately licks. "Seniority," she says, a word which explains

so much. Her husband works in the public relations department of Cavalier

Industries.

Jeanette frowns. Her husband works for the agency that has the Cavalier

account. "He can't push us around."

"Oh," yawns Tillie, whose husband is a little older and doubtless, in some

ways, a good deal sharper than Herb, "those adding-machine people are easy to

handle, because they're so awfully good at seeing what's in front of them."

"What could be not in front of them?"

"Like that old Trizer that used to be with Cavalier," Tillie said. "One of the

boys—now don't ask me which one— wanted a little more room hi the office, so

he had a chat with the Great Man—you know, funny funny—and made a bar-bet sort

of thing that he could pad up the old expense account right through the

ceiling and old Trizer would never catch it." She sips, she laughs lightly.

"What happened?" asks Jeanette, agog.

"Why, old Trizer knew my—uh, this boy was after him, so when the heavy

swindle-sheets started coming hi, he

quietly began to collect them until he had a stack heavy enough to drop on

this boy's head. But the boy fed them out so carefully that it took a while.

Meanwhile, of course, the Great Man was getting copies each time he did it,

just to keep the funny funny gag alive. So by the time Trizer had his bomb

ready to drop, five weeks had gone by and that was too long for the Great Man

to think it was funny any more. So now they kicked old Trizer upstairs to the

rear ranks of the Board of Directors where his seniority can't hurt anyone but

himself."

"Just deserts," says Jeanette.

Tillie laughs. "Sounds like a good name for a high-class bakery."

"Just Desserts . . . Oh yes," says Jeanette brightly, for she hadn't thought

of it until now, "Herb's using that line to head up a new presentation to snag

the Big-Bug Bakeries account. Be a dear and don't tell anyone." Meanwhile she

will tell Herb, but with the grasshopper speech—jump, boy, jump.

THEY STOOD ON SPRINGY turf, Charlie with buckled knees, his companion's arm

around him, holding him up. Charlie shook himself and stood, and when he

could, he looked up. He then shuddered so hard that the arm tightened around

him. He made an immense effort and grinned and threw off the arm. His

companion made a small speech, with gestures for up, for down, for fast, for

the bump on Charlie's head, for a matrix of humilities which probably included

"I'm sorry." Charlie grinned again and feebly clapped him on the back. He then

cast another worried look upward and moved away from the building. Not only

was it altogether too big, much too high; the bulk of it seemed to be hanging

over him like a fist. It was as wild a piece of architecture as the other,

though more spindle-shaped than conical, more topple than top.

They moved across the turf—there seemed to be no roads or paths—and if Charlie

had thought his companion's odd garb might attract attention, he was

disabused. He himself was much more of an oddment. Not that the people peered,

or crowded about: by no means. But one could sense by their cheerful waves and

quickly averted eyes that they were curious, and further, that curiosity was

out of place.

Rounding the building, they came upon perhaps fifty of them splashing in the

pool. For bathing suits they wore only the soft silky sporran things, which

clung to them without visible means of support; but by this time this was a

category he was prepared to accept. They were, without exception, gravely

polite in greeting him with a wave, a smile, a word, and apparently happy to

see Ms companion.

Away from the pool, they wore a great many kinds and styles of clothes—often

two by two, though he failed to catch the significance, if any, of this. It

might be as little as a vivid, all but fluorescent ribbon of orange about the

biceps—plus, of course, the sporran—or it might be as much as baggy

pantaloons, tremendous winglike collars, steeple hats, platform sandals—there

was no end to them, and, except for the ones who walked in pairs, there was no

similarity between any of them except in the beauty of their colors and the

richness and variety of the fabrics. Costume was obviously adornment to them,

nothing more; unlike any people he had ever encountered or read about, they

seemed to have no preoccupation with any particular part of their bodies.

He saw no women.

A strange place. The air was peculiarly invigorating, and the sky, though

bright—with, now that he looked at it, & touch of that silvery radiance he had

seen in the "padded cell"—was overcast. Flowers grew profusely, some with

heady, spicy scents, many quite new to him, with color splashed on with a free

and riotous hand. The turf was as impossible as the buildings—even and springy

everywhere, completely without bald patches or unwanted weeds, and in just as

good shape here, near the buildings, where scores of people milled about, as

it was far off.

He was led around the building and through an archway which leaned

inexplicably but pleasantly to the left, and his companion took him?

solicitously by the arm. Before he could wonder why, they dropped straight

down about sixty feet, and found themselves standing in an area vaguely like a

subway station, except that instead of waiting for a train they

stepped—rather, the native stepped; Charlie was hauled —off the edge of the

platform and had to go through the unpleasant experience of flexing his legs

to take a drop that

just wasn't a drop—for the pit was bridged from side to side by the invisible

substance which had levitated them down the building.

Halfway across, they stopped, the man gave Charlie a querying look, Charlie

braced himself for anything at all and nodded; and, just how, Charlie couldn't

see—it seemed to be some sort of gesture—they were flying through a tunnel.

They stood still, and there was little sensation of starting or stopping;

whatever it was they stood on whisked them away at some altogether unlikely

speed until, hi a very few minutes, they were stopped again at another

platform. They walked into a sort of square cave at the side and were flicked

up to ground level under the conical building. They walked away from the

subway while Charlie concentrated on swallowing his heart and decided to let

his stomach follow them whenever it had a mind to.

They crossed to what appeared to be a cave-like central court, all around the

walls of which the natives were flashing up, flashing down, on their invisible

elevators; they were a pretty sight with their bright clothes fluttering. And

the air was filled with music; he thought at first it was some sort of public

address system, but found that they sang; softly, moving from place to place,

into the public hall and out of it, in beautiful harmonies, they hummed and

trilled.

Then, just as they approached a side wall, he saw something that so dumfounded

him he barely noticed the experience of being flipped two hundred feet up like

a squirted fruit-seed; he stood numb with astonishment, letting himself be

pushed here, led there, while his whole sense of values somersaulted.

Two of the men who strolled past him in the central court were pregnant. There

was no mistaking it.

He looked askance at his smiling companion—the strong face, the well-muscled

arms and sturdy legs . . . true, the chin was very smooth, and—uh—he had very

prominent pectoral muscles. The areola was considerably larger than those on a

man ... on the other hand, why not? The eyes were slightly different, too.

What's so ... now let's see. If "he" were a woman, then they were all women.

Then where were the men?

He recalled the way sh— h— the way he had been plucked up on the first lift,

in those arms, like a sack of soda crackers. Well, if that's what the women

could do—what could the men do?

First he pictured giants—real twelve, fifteen-foot behemoths.

Then he pictured some puny little drone chained up in a.—a service station

some place hi the sub-basement . . .

And then he began to worry about himself. "Where are you taking me?" he

demanded.

His guide nodded and smiled and took him by the forearm, and he had the choice

of walking or falling flat on his face.

They came to a room.

The door opened . . . dilated, rather; it was an oval door, and it split down

the middle and drew open with a snap as they approached it, and it snapped

enthusiastically closed behind them.

He stopped and backed up to the door. He was permitted to. The door felt solid

enough for ten like him, and not even a knob.

He looked up.

They all looked back at him.

Wmerb Roile goes over to see

Smitty. The kids are asleep. He has an electronic baby-sitter about the size

of a portable radio. He knocks, and Smitty lets him in.

"Hi."

He crosses to the sideboard in the dining area of Smitty's living room, puts

down the sitter and plugs it hi. "Whatch' doin'?"

Smitty scoops up the baby he had put on the couch when he went to answer the

door. He hangs it on his shoulder where it attaches itself like a lapel. "Oh,"

he says, "just generally mindin' the shop till the boss gets back."

"Boss hell," says Herb.

"You the boss in your house?"

"You know, you're kiddin'," says Herb, "but I'll give you a straight answer in

case that was a question."

"Give me a straight answer in case."

"Our kind of people, there is no boss in the house any more."

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UtterlyasidefromthesubjectmatterToGERTRUDEandherIsaacVENUSPLUSXAPYRAMIDBOOKFirstPrinting,September1960Secondprinting.May1962Thirdprinting,March1968Fourthprinting,December1969Fifthprinting,July1971Thisbookisfiction.Noresemblanceisintendedbetweenanycharacterhereinandanyperson,livingordead;anysuchresem...

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Theodore Sturgeon - Venus Plus X

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